Nothing in common
by Bye11
Summary: "We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement." (Herman Hesse). Post season 4.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Getting into Cary & Kalinda is scary. They are so difficult to write for but there are too few fictions for them around here, so I thought I'd contribute. This will be a short-story. 4, 5 chapters at most and it's set after the season finale. Will and Alicia are not the only ones with things left unsaid. Let's hope I wasn't too off-base with Cary here. If so, I apologize in advance.**

Who was still so old-fashioned to send wedding invitations by mail? On golden paper to boot?

Arabesquely handwritten, velvety to the touch wedding invitations. There had to be some kind of rule that assumed a negative RSVP when the whole presentation was so ridiculously pompous.

Instead, he RSVPed Yes and put the note in the pile for the secretary to send out. When you were the head of a newborn firm and an Innocence-project buddy was marrying the daughter of a judge, you did not say no.

Each event was an opportunity to swap business-cards, to court clients. A wedding was the perfect venue. Open bar, cynical people sneering at the happy couple and waiting to be hand-held to a new law-firm.

Alicia's life seemed to be entrenched in night-parties at the Opera, at the opening of a foundation, at the awards ceremony for something or other. As the First Couple of Illinois, she and her husband were always honored guests. Eli had come to their firm but in exchange he had required her presence to a number of appearances.

She despised it all, the parties, the mandatory networking, the boredom, the people, he could clearly see it, but she did it anyway. He had to pull his weight and go to a self-important, ostentatious wedding.

The last time a wedding-invitation had come to his work place, someone had intercepted it. She had come to his office waving it in her hand and he had smirked and lowered his eyes, prepared for a slaughter.

"Mr and Mrs Ryland and Mr and Mrs Sutton require the honor of your presence to the wedding... here take it, I got bored already."

"The Suttons and the Rylands, generous people that they are, are asking me if I have a plus one."

He didn't truly know what had been that day that had led him to ask her the question. But he had.

"Soooo, do I have one?"

"How would I know? Unless you're seriously asking me to go to a wedding with you. In which case the answer is "Not a chance in hell" but I'd imagine you know that one."

"Why not? You'd get to be seen on the arm of the most intriguing man in the room. Plus people get drunk and are depressed at weddings. Perfect time to wheedle secrets."

"People tell me secrets even when they're not drunk or in a taffeta dress. That's how good I am."

She had delivered her last line with that trademark demeanor of hers that combined her slightly raised eyebrow with her expression that was the love-child of a smile and a smirk. Then she had left his office and they had never talked about it again.

This time he could not even get close to obtaining a rejection from her.

Lately all he had been receiving were menacing glares and malicious smirks anytime she found something that would inevitably destroy his or Alicia's case and help "Gardner & Associates" to a new win. Robyn was a spectacular investigator but Kalinda was animated by the fire of revenge and there was no stopping her. Or Will for that matter. They hadn't spared any resource to sink what used to be their co-workers.

What kind of chit-chat could he have at the wedding?

No, I'm not with anyone... Being name-partner is hard work... Yes, we left Lockhart/Gardner, it was time for a change...No, don't worry I'm not forgetting to have fun...

Fun, what a foreign world.

Friends were sending him invitations to big social gatherings but that was about it.

He had tried hanging out with some of them but the distance his job had put between him and his personal life had taken its toll. Entertainment by conversation was scarce and instead of putting up with the farce for much longer, he had just stopped. Some of them were envious to the point of animosity of his having a partnership with the wife of the Governor, some couldn't understand the risks he had taken. Some others... who knew?

Family was out of the question.

What was left if he desired something more than work?

Drugs? He had been staying far away from those ever since Alicia has covered his being high with Will and Diane. Days off were a commodity name-partners didn't trade in.

Sex? He could go out of his office, take the elevator down and in the block he would find two or three bars with plenty of potential for a one-night stand. He had done it. He might do it again. Yet, somehow it felt like the kind of behavior he had outgrown.

Or, maybe, he was afraid of going that route because he knew what he could expect. He could expect to become Will Gardner. In his forties, still boyishly charming, never married, on the list of most-eligible bachelors, with a bevy of beauties around him.

That was the image he projected to the world but he had worked around him long enough not to be fooled. All of those were merely smoke sculptures that hid his love for one woman. That one woman that he had helped, cuddled, defended and that had stolen clients from him when he wasn't looking.

He hadn't neither questioned nor judged Alicia's decision. Merely reveled in it. And going behind Will's back hadn't fazed him that much. Not compared to how terrible he had felt in betraying Diane.

However, he pitied his ex-boss. The white-to-black change in his countenance and in his dealings with Alicia spoke of a profound pain.

At times, he caught himself wishing that his actions had left in Kalinda a fraction of the trace Alicia's actions had clearly left in Will. It was a petty thought that he generally brushed away. He didn't want her to suffer per se, he just needed some kind of signal that he mattered to her more than the myriad of men and women she used and played for information.

Because the last piece of the private-life puzzle was love. And despite all his efforts, despite having repeated to himself over and over again that it was a dangerous idea and that he should forget her very existence, Kalinda had taken residence in a very special position in his life.

She had become the woman he was perennially on the verge of falling in love with.

One little push from her would suffice to make him her fool.

He had come close.

She had protected him from a certain layoff and gave him the necessary space to finalize his project.

She had let him compliment her.

They had slept together and he had completely understood why all those conquests of her were still at his beck and call even after years.

They had shared secret smirks across the crowded bullpen.

Then it had all gone terribly wrong.

He hadn't known how to proceed, what step to take. Kalinda was no normal woman. He had threaded softly, trying not to push too hard and scare her into a precocious retreat but he had fumbled with the right decisions. She had told him long before that she was unknowable to him. 3 years later and he still hadn't even scratched the surface of who Kalinda Sharma was.

The timing had been off. He had found some sort of equilibrium with her but then he had focused on his firm. He owed it to himself and to his partners in crime. He couldn't possibly let it all go. He had tried to bring her with him, to give them a new lease, a new chance at work and something else and then...

He refused to take all the blame. She had been impervious to any plea, unreasonable in her demands for money. Didn't she know that he valued her expertise, her intelligence, her instincts, her in general more than anybody else in the world?. He had been losing the reins of his enterprise before the start line. He had seen in Robyn the only way to stop the chaos and re-assess his power over his future. He had taken it.

Kalinda had seen it as a personal back-stabbing.

Maybe she was right.

Maybe she wasn't.

He had learned that there were two sets of rules in their world: the ones that Kalinda obeyed, which amounted more or less to the motto "be faithful to yourself" and the ones for everybody else. She could play people, tweak them, invade their offices, their privacy. She could leverage her friendships and her bosses and get away with it all, a smile and her image unblemished. She had even partly gotten back in Alicia's good graces after having slept with her husband. The impossible made possible.

She had this unique way of asking for help. The vulnerability that came with admitting the need for an external hand did not touch Kalinda. It didn't even exist in her. She moved from person to person like Chicago Royalty. She went through the motions of making a request but she didn't truly ask. She was owed. She didn't have helpers or friends. She had servants that satisfied her whim for knowledge. Helping her felt like a pleasurable duty. A duty nonetheless.

He was tired of her self-entitlement.

This last year, he had been put through a grinder. He had been beaten, he had been humiliated and then used by his father, he had been offered a equity partnership that had then disappeared and then he had thrown all of his energy into a new endeavor, trying so hard to keep all the pieces together. She had witnessed at least some of it.

Hadn't he earned just a little bit of respect for how he had handled things? Didn't she care for him just a little bit? He did not expect sympathy from a tough problem-solver like her. He didn't even want it. But respect? Acceptance? Friendship?

Hadn't she been the one to tell him that she couldn't give him what he wanted because they worked together? Couldn't she see that at least one of the obstacles had been taken away?

He was not going to be Will Gardner. He needed to start or end this thing with Kalinda once and for all.

He had allowed her to be angry. He had allowed her to stew in her revengeful mood. He had accepted her not wanting to hear his side of the story. He had taken the looks, the whispers, the scowls.

He wouldn't anymore.

He was due some slack-cutting from her. Time to cash it in.


	2. Chapter 2

"Look who's there!"

"Hello Holly."

"Hello Linds."

"I thought I already told you to stop using that poor excuse of a nickname."

"You did. You also might have threatened me but I know you, Linds. Your bark is always worse than your bite..."

"I should start showing my bite more then."

"You definitely should. I missed it."

Holly winked and she returned it with a smirk. Presences from back in her life were never welcomed in her life but Holly might be the exception. Cocky, flirty and without strings. Fun, just like she used to be after she fled from Canada.

She truly hated the nickname though. It had to go.

"I never will if you don't stop calling me as a blonde, naive child"

She merely laughed.

"So, what do you need today Linds?"

She turned on her heels and made for the door. Some respect needed to be upheld.

"Cut the theatrics, Linds. I'm the ASA on the case, who else are you going to pester for help?"

"I don't pester. Mosquitoes pester. Men that want to get laid pester. I don't belong in either category. Bye Holly!"

"Since when are you so touchy?"

She hoped the expression on her face could properly translate the disgust she felt at that word. She started moving away... 3,2,1

"Kalinda, wait! Come on, I'm not your enemy."

"Actually, you are."

"Until I give you the info you need on the case, right? Then I'm back to being your friend..."

"You're back to not being on my bad side, which should be more than enough."

"No, no, Kalinda, that's not how it works anymore. I sit at the grown-up table now."

"Which means..."

"I negotiate right back. I give you the info you need, you spend tomorrow night reminding what are the perks of not being on your bad side."

"Now, that sounds a lot like prostitution. In this office, it is frowned upon."

"It may sound like prostitution. It is me getting advantage of my "informational privileges". That expression kind of stuck with me since a certain someone invented it."

She had her there. Also, a night with Holly might just be what she needed to get rid of unwanted thoughts.

"Fine, you better be prepared to show me that you have memorized other teachings of mine."

Holly went to retrieve the file she needed and moved her legs just a bit more sinuously than normal, for her benefit no doubt.

"You'll find me more than prepared and eager to teach."

"To teach? I don't remember you being so delusional."

"I don't remember you being so settled down. Staying too long in a place... techniques get stale and...unimaginative."

Holly raised one eyebrow and shrugged as if she were disclosing some irrefutable reality. Good, she had shed some of that false innocence that had bothered her back at the time of their first meeting. She pried the file from her hands and as always prepared to have the last word.

"I don't blame you. Some people do need external stimuli to be imaginative. I, on the other hand, don't need anything. I invented imaginative."

She could hear Holly's laughter behind her.

"Tomorrow night at 8, outside the courthouse."

There. Done. Easy. Information and carefree sex in one neat package. She still had all her moves. She still knew how to play people without attachment getting in the way. Without hurting. Without getting hurt.

They were only the exceptions. The tag-team of the woman she had regretted hurting and the man that had hurt her.

And he had. Because he had to have known that the game she was playing was not just about money and power. It was about trust. And they had both lost.

It was apparently simple for people to assume that her motives were futile and that her life was nothing more than a silly series of battles for information. And it couldn't be all accounted to her image clouded in mystery. Cary had made it all about being more valued, appreciated. He had just assumed her services were for sale. Not a moment to consider her allegiance to Alicia or to Will & Diane.

And yes, of course she had played Will for a raise and an advancement in her role. What self-respecting pragmatic, self-reliant woman wouldn't? But that didn't mean that she had been utterly conflicted.

On the one hand there was a firm, a man, that had believed in her since the beginning and had given her a place to start again after the troubling time at the SA's office. There was the chance of tentatively repairing her one female friendship-and-nothing-more she had valued. There was maintaining a friend like Will that listened and never asked more than was she felt comfortable revealing.

On the other hand there had been the possibility of becoming finally rich and completely independent, of being consulted in important decisions, of never having to face any internal competition, just heading other investigators if necessary. On the other hand there was him.

Defining what Cary was merely a waste of her time. Definitions were juvenile and below her. But he had indeed amounted to much more than she had believed at the beginning.

He had started as the obnoxious new associate that believed a law degree gave him God-like powers over any other non-lawyer populating the firm. He was young and boyishly handsome which had probably gotten him laid more than the average law-student which had made him unjustifiably popular and insufferably cocky.

But then having gotten to work beside him had allowed her to discover that he wasn't much different from the boss she didn't dislike. He seemed worse than he actually was. He cared for his clients more than he showed, he was competitive but he could see the value in his opponents. Not all of his jokes landed flat and his company was astonishingly sufferable.

She had felt herself end on a slippery slope with Cary. Being a little more revealing, trusting him with more, asking help in delicate situations. It had surprised her, at the beginning. Cary didn't share much with Nick, with Lana or with some of the others men and women she had been drawn to in her past. He wouldn't ever be violent, he wouldn't necessarily trick her at every moment, he wouldn't be interested in her merely for sex. He was the good-boyfriend material that her mother had tried to get her to like, with no avail. That label had always constituted an insult for her but with Cary, maybe, it wasn't.

The good boyfriend had also much more in common with her that she had ever imagined. He was on his own, for one. No noisy family to cuddle him at Christmas and Thanksgiving, sending him encouragement when he felt down. No friends that were more than contacts he hang out with for appearances' sake. Not a Will willing to go to war for him should he ever need it. Yet, alone, he thrived. He was smart in his maneuvers and cunning when the situation required it. He could wear a double mask. She could not help but admire a fellow survivor that had managed despite it all to remain decent.

And that was why it had infuriated her so much, his going behind her back. Because he was supposed to be the decent guy. Decent guys did not exist to try and leverage her with unresolved feelings and grand promises just to go behind her back. Decent guys did not try to trap her into a job using friendship and the potential of more. Decent guys did not go to FUCKING Robyn!

To be honest, she had predicted him failing in a short time without her and with only those brainless other fourth-years. He would have fallen and learned his lesson. She hadn't counted on Alicia joining him.

She had gathered the news from one of the fleeing clients while on a mission for Will & Diane. At the beginning she had thought of an exaggerating sales-pitch for the new firm but then she had reflected that Cary would never have been so carelessly brazen. It had to be the truth. One more nail, probably the final one, in the coffin of their mending relationship.

Cary wouldn't crush and burn. He would be co-head of a booming firm because Alicia and Alicia's name would attract money and clients. Her first thought was for the missed occasion. As a trio they would have been sensational. Practically unbeatable. And unseen she allowed herself a sort of smile for them and their new adventure that would never be.

Then she returned to reality. Reality gave her the chance to push Cary down from the high of his new position and show off her superior ability. Reality meant she had to tell Diane.

Reality meant someone had to tell Will.

That had been a scene she would never forget. A scene she recalled to mind whenever Cary's smile or his word made her flirt with forgiveness. Not that it had been Cary's fault per se but it reinforced in her the firm belief that, by way of his back-plotting, she had ended up on the right team.

They had decided to go break the news as an united front. When she had revealed what she knew to Diane, she had double-checked Alicia's involvement and the woman had followed her same reaction. At first, she had focused on her interests, on what it meant for her but then, all of a sudden, she had downed the drink she was holding with a simple sentence they both knew to be the truth: "He'll be devastated."

Will was in his office, hard at work on his death-penalty case. He raised his eyes and at seeing the two of them together, immediately understood that it was about the firm.

"Have you found out?"

The question was immediate and addressed to her.

"Yes. Diane already knows."

"Diane here means bad news. It's Cary, isn't it? The gall of him! Working with me every day of this Hail Mary case and at the same time plotting..."

"Will", they had both interrupted.

She turned to Diane for guidance. She nodded and with her resolute tone said what they both weren't willing to voice.

"Alicia too."

He was startled but utterly incredulous. He swatted the harsh truth they had handed him as a fastidious insect.

"Nah, that's all false advertising. I was with her an hour ago. She was fine. She would have told me if something was amiss."

She and Diane were both tough women. They didn't hug, they didn't unnecessarily cry, they didn't make coo sounds. But from the look she saw in Diane's face at that moment they shared, for a brief second, an impulse to break all of their patterns.

"We're sure."

She saw the change in his face, the darkening of the expression once the realization set in. She saw his jaw setting, his fists closing to contain the rage, the mist appearing in his eyes.

Then it was all over. He returned to his briefs.

"It's too late to do anything about it now. Ms. Conley shouldn't suffer for our civil wars. Do you think you could get a complete list of the clients by tomorrow?"

"Yes, of course."

"Good, Diane could you set up an equity partner meeting for tomorrow morning? We need our full ranks for an emergency-strategy."

"Sure, do you want to oust her like that?"

"She probably won't come and if she does, well, she deserves all that she gets and more."

They both nodded and moved away.

"Thanks, to the both of you."

Nodding again, they left him to his appeal. An appeal he won two days later, despite everything. She was standing with Diane at the end of the room, as a telltale sign to whoever wanted to listen that Will Gardner wasn't alone and that they were bent but never broken.

* * *

The experience had given her a renewed closeness to Will. They had both sworn off emotional complications and they found themselves more than once starting the night at a bar on the prowl and ending it in unknown locations. His toast the first night had been her new philosophy.

"Damn healthy and stable!"

She would have to ditch him for Holly the day after. He would probably be too busy with the case anyway. And she would be demonstrating just how not stale her capacities were. She hadn't even realized the thought had put a smirk on her face when a voice intruded in her solitude, right on her doorstep.

"Do I want to know what you're smirking about?"


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: So this is the end of this story. I wanted to publish before Season 5 so I wouldn't be influenced. This would never ever happen in The Good Wife since really talking is not allowed but I tried to remain as IC as possible. Thanks to Josie for reading this over for me and offering amazing suggestions :)**

"Do I want to know what you're smirking about?"

"Not about you."

Of course not. He hadn't even presumed such a possibility. He also knew the answer to his own rather rhetorical question. He didn't want to know because one way or the other it was going to hurt him. Either she had just deconstructed his hard-fought case or she was coming or going to a rendezvous with a man, woman, that wasn't him. He had thought he would have gotten used to the pangs of jealousy. Kalinda had always been out of his reach, never playing by the rules of monogamy and even if she were, she wouldn't choose him, would she? But still the idea of her focusing on someone else was piercingly unpleasant. He took it as a personal failing, his not being able of getting his emotions to obey as they should. He wouldn't be standing between her and her door otherwise.

"What the hell are you doing here, Cary?"

The tone was familiar by now. It had been since the night Peter Florrick had been elected Governor when he had replayed her reaction and tried to understand just what kind of combination of words or answers would have been the right answer. He had concluded there wasn't any. There was never a right answer when it came to Kalinda. Debilitating idea.

"I don't remember you being unable to take hints. I'm not even trying to be subtle."

No, she wasn't and he felt better for it. He had come here to put it all in the open so her subtleties wouldn't matter anymore.

"Neither am I."

He had learned in his time around her that it was better to say as few as possible so as to let her steer the conversation. At least at the beginning. The probability of doing a wrong move was extremely high and he had to take all the precautions in the world to minimize it. That was another implication he had grasped fairly consistently. When there were no right answers, all of them had the potential to be wrong. Probably were.

She tried to move past him but he held his ground. He had come here with a precise mission. He wasn't leaving before it even started.

"You can keep your apologies Cary and leave me be."

"Excellent. I'm not here to offer any."

That had taken her off guard. That he was able to tell was a sign of just how much time he had spent trying to decipher her. What would be obvious in an everywoman's face in Kalinda's it was nothing more than the tiny move of her eyebrow. Easy to miss and to misinterpret.

"What do you want then?"

"I don't want to become like Will."

That one had been a calculated risk. He knew how much Kalinda cared about his ex-boss. He knew about their being each other's wingperson lately. He suspected she had heard from both Alicia and Will just how deep their relationship lied. She could probably guess accurately the depth of Will's pain. He was convinced that her never-waning anger towards him and Alicia was partly on his benefit. They were all strong feelings on her part and those were what he wanted to channel.

"Leave him out of it."

He hadn't wanted to include the ghost of a man that already seemed to have a bigger place in his offices that he had ever wished. But if he wanted to give himself a real shot of being heard he had to peruse the best strategy. The best strategy included a deviation. Getting to Kalinda directly was next to impossible. Getting to her by proxies, on the other hand, was almost feasible. Alicia had been the most effective proxy during the years but at that point probably she wasn't anymore. So he went with his best bet. If he managed to paint the parallel correctly, maybe, just maybe, he had a shot of becoming the proxy people would use in the future to get to her.

"I won't be pining over you forever."

That was his going all in because he was being awfully judgmental towards both Will and Alicia. But if he brought her to rage then maybe he'd get some honest words that were something more than smirks or scowls.

"Nobody is asking you to."

"It's not truly a thing you ask and receive, is it?"

"Can you turn it off?"

"What?"

"You know, just the time necessary for your routine backplotting."

She had set the trap and he had fallen in it way too easily. Damn it! He had been doing so well. Then he decided to turn the tables.

"No, no, no. I don't routinely backplot. You do."

"I plot. It's different."

"Really? So you didn't take us all for fools say for example during the time of Will's Grand Jury? Lana especially."

He had to admit that he had been glad for her interference. He hadn't liked that investigation one bit. But he wasn't above using it to make a point.

"That was Will. And she made the mistake of blackmailing me. I don't recommend it."

"So she deserved everything she got, is that it?"

She merely shrugged in response.

"And it's the same with me, right? One mistake and I'm suddenly your worst enemy. Anything that I did in the four years before disappeared. Pouff."

He added the hand gesture as a touch of theatricality. All those granted favors, all the times he had been there when she needed anything gone. As if they had never existed.

"What do you want Cary?"

And once again she had the power in her hands and he was just along for the ride. She decided the pace, the destination, everything. He was done with all the games. If this were to be once again her victory, he'd at least show all the cards.

"Do you care about me at all, Kalinda?"

"It's time for you to go."

She was an absolute master at being evasive. He supposed it came with the job but she had made an art of it.

"Of course it is. I'm not feeling particularly willing to, though. Care to answer my question?"

"Cary..."

"Ooooh, the threatening tone. Now I'm scared."

"Are you drunk?"

He wasn't. He had drunk a scotch or two to calm his nerves. Nothing he couldn't handle. He merely needed to see what was behind all her defenses. Just a peek and he would be lost again. But she had to give him something to work on. A glimpse of vulnerability, of reciprocity.

"That would make it easier, wouldn't it? But no, I'm not. It's not a difficult question, Kalinda. What are you scared about? You can tell me that I don't mean more than the woman or man that you picked up at the bar yesterday or that you will pick up tomorrow and I'll be out of your way. Free me, Kalinda. Tell me that it's stupid of me to believe that I'm different than them. To you, we are all the same."

That seemed to upset her a bit. Then she repeated herself, trying to once again avoid the answer.

"You should go, Cary."

"Can you be straight with me, Kalinda? For once, in your life, just be straight."

"You weren't supposed to lead me on like that, Cary. Not you."

"So someone else could have gotten away with it? But I'm not allowed any sins, is that it?"

"What am I to you, Cary, eh? A professional asset? The dangerous and mysterious woman you wished you had dated in college?"

"Of course not."

"Then what?"

He wanted to slap himself for not having prepared a proper response. He should have expected a question like that. Maybe, subconsciously, he hadn't believed possible that he could get to this point in the conversation.

"So I should have an answer while you don't? Do you believe that I'll change, that you'll be the one that manages to transform me..."

"What? NO."

God, no.

"How could you believe something like that?"

"A relationship, any relationship is based on a promise of change. You should know that by now."

Did he know that? He had broken up with more than one woman because he had felt the desire for her to radically change. It was a tell-tale sign of a doomed relationship. But minor changes were more than acceptable.

"Sure, and changing is pathetic, right? So, instead, what should life be? A continuous coasting along from person to person? If you ask me that's not any less pathetic. You're not there to satisfy my thirst of adventure, Kalinda. Nor have I ever thought that "more" between us included you becoming a shade of yourself. I just... wanted to try, is it such a ridiculous idea?"

She sat down, her back on the wall, almost resigned to having to talk.

"Trying is costly, Cary. People use you."

"I wouldn't."

"You already did."

"You can't think it was all about you."

"Isn't that what trying is? Making it all about the other?"

"Not necessarily. Gosh you make it sound so grim."

That got a sort of smile out of her. To his astonishment, it was sort of working. They were saying things that had never been discussed before. But to continue, he had to explain that decision. If only he could make her understand...

"You're right, I should never have done what I did. It was never to hurt you but I was wrong. I was looking at failure before I had even started. I didn't know Alicia was coming with me. She was threatening to oust me to all the partners. The others were accusing me of not being objective when it came to you and I... I overreacted. I saw a way out and I took it and I'm sorry. I should have come to you."

"There's no undoing it."

"Yes, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a terrible thing. I'm not your boss, and that makes it better for us."

"Us?"

"Yes, us. We can be professionals and keep our private lives separate from work."

"You're naive."

He would not accept that.

"No, I'm not. So maybe I haven't had all your training but I have seen my fair share of reality. You know that. I still think that it could work."

"Cary, we have been at each other's throats for months now. It won't stop."

"So it will be part of the fun."

She rolled her eyes at his choice of words. She took subtext to a whole other level. It was incredibly embedded in her way of expressing herself that he had to pay close attention not to miss what could be a big chunk of the conversation.

Ok, maybe now that he was a name partner and that the lost cases could push them on the brink of bankruptcy fun wasn't the proper word. But he had smiled more than once at being bested by her before.

"You know what I mean, we have been adversaries before and we were friends."

"Right. When you told me you mistrusted me."

"That was different."

"Yes, it was better then. I'm on a bid to destroy you now."

"Will is on a bid to destroy me and Alicia. You're just along for the ride."

He realized the horrible phrasing of the sentence as soon as he had finished saying it.

"Have you ever known me to being just along for the ride?"

"Fine, Kalinda, sure. But if it weren't for Will, you wouldn't be so hard on us."

That, he was sure of. Alicia had been probably the closest thing to a friend than Kalinda had. And he liked to believe that he had been at one point on the list of her sufferable people.

"You had to know that your mistake would have consequences."

"And... we're back to that."

"I trusted you, Cary. "

Her tone of voice lowered slightly as it always happened when she spoke about personal matters of hers. Trust was like the Holy Grail when it came to Kalinda. The significance of the statement wasn't lost on him. He wondered who she trusted anymore. Will, surely and then, who else?

"And now you don't anymore."

"Now I don't know which is the same as no."

She had a point. Trust was very much a black-and-white game. He had learned that the hard way.

"And so that's it."

"You should get me out of your head for real, Cary. It'd be better."

He had wished more than once to be able to do it. But he never concluded that his life without her would be better. No, better definitely wasn't the right term.

"No, it'd be simpler. That's for sure. It'd be normal probably. But better, you can't know that. Look, I'm not asking you to marry me..."

She actually flinched at the word as if even the mere verbalization of the concept could hurt her.

"Wow, I'd never seen such a reaction to the idea."

She got quiet, her eyes suddenly down, clearly uncomfortable with what she was about to say. He sat down, resting his back on her door. If Kalinda truly was opening up, he couldn't be standing over her. It felt wrongly intimidating.

"I was married."

Now, that he was definitely not expecting. Kalinda married? Had there been a man or a woman capable of achieving such a feat?

"To Nick Savarese."

It was the piece of the puzzle that completed the picture. It made sense, why the client had started behaving erratically around him and now he got the confirmation that Nick Savarese ordered his beating. He had been flirting with his wife. For a man like that, it must have been a capital offense.

But the other implications were sinister, ominous. Why would Kalinda choose a man like that? Had he hurt her? If that was the kind of man she fell in love with, he really didn't know the first thing about her.

"He had me beaten up."

"I know. I'm sorry. He's gone now."

"Did you love him?"

Silence. Silence that he filled with the certainty of the answer. She wouldn't take so long for the word she uttered more than any other: no.

"I did, for way too long."

He remembered suddenly that Alicia had seemed to take the rein more than once in that case, which begged the question:

"Did Alicia know?"

"Yes."

He got up. He had learned early that Kalinda was nothing if not surprising but this particular surprise was actually harrowing.

"I thought you trusted me then."

"I did."

"Then why didn't you tell me?"

"It was complicated."

"But you told Alicia. It wasn't complicated for her?"

"Cary..."

She got up too and placed her hand on his wrist.

"I had bruises for days and it didn't occur to you to tell me that he was your husband? Were you with him at the time?"

"I wasn't with him."

She was knowingly skirting the core of the question.

"But you were sleeping with him, weren't you?"

"Come on, Cary..."

"I'm sorry, what is it that we've doing here? Don't I deserve the answer to that question? I need to know if you were sleeping with a man that had one of his henchmen send me to a hospital."

"It wasn't like that."

"It wasn't like what?"

"You can't possibly believe that I knew about his plan and I let it happen."

"Of course I don't believe that. But what did you do after? If you knew it was him why didn't you tell me? Did you want to keep him out of jail?"

He desperately hoped not.

"You're being too damn rational, Cary. It was a complicated situation. I dealt with it. End of story."

"How? How did you deal with it? Is he in prison? Is he dead? Or is he somewhere in Canada spending the money of his drug trafficking? Could he come back?"

"You don't need to know."

He did need to know.

"No, no, no. I don't get to know. It's much different."

"Look, it doesn't matter."

"It does matter. You've been punishing me for my betrayal but you don't see this as a breach of trust?"

"I'm a private person. You know that."

"Right, then everything is ok."

The hollow sound that came out of his mouth was supposed to be a disbelieving laugh but it felt more like an exasperated sigh.

"I can't say that you didn't warn me, can I? You're not unknowable. Not to a man like Nick Savarese, not to Alicia. But you are unknowable to me. It was stupid of me to think of it as a challenge. You were deadly serious."

"So I have a part of my past I'm not proud of. I didn't want to talk about it."

It couldn't be reduced to just that, could it?

"Not with you. Not with anyone. Why is it so difficult to understand? You didn't talk to me about your father, did you? Why is that?"

"Geez, why didn't I tell the woman I have been trying to impress forever that my father considers me a failure and wants nothing to do with me unless he needs a favor?"

"Maybe I was trying to do the same."

"What?"

"He... He used to get to me. I didn't want you to know."

He wished he had the power to tell whether or not Kalinda was being truthful at that particular moment. He knew for sure that she had never looked at him like that, with eyes that seemed less inscrutable and much more unambiguous.

He was confused. Conflicting thoughts were running rampant through his brain and he was at a complete loss on how the conversation should continue.

Should he give up and accept once and for all that there was no way for him and Kalinda to be anything but twisted friends?

Should he press forward and use that moment of vulnerability of hers to finally understand something real about the woman that had so long plagued him?

He needed more information to not make a gigantic mistake he wasn't sure he could find his way back from.

"Why did you tell me now, today? You don't trust me anymore so it doesn't matter what I know?"

"You were talking about more Cary."

He moved off from her, instinctually. The fact that she had somehow created a comparison between whatever she had with that man and what they could have stung. A lot. She perceived it and went on to explain.

"You're nothing like him, Cary. And yet, you have already more power than I was willing to give away."

That sounded both dire and strangely promising. Did that mean she cared?

"And you're afraid I'm going to use it against you?"

"Don't make me repeat myself. You've already used it."

"I didn't know I had it. I wouldn't use it against you now as long as you don't use your superpower."

She ventured into a smirk.

"Superpower? Really?"

"I have been called worse than lame, Kalinda. It's how it feels."

"So what are you proposing?"

"A truce."

"I won't stop helping Will."

"I'm not asking you to. Just do it without manipulating me. And I won't manipulate you."

"I haven't been manipulating you, Cary."

"You haven't had a chance to, these last few months."

"And now, what's changed?"

"And now, I want you to have a chance and not do it."

Yes, that seemed precisely the kind of first step he was looking for.

"How?"

His finger started a ghost pattern on her right cheekbone.

"Well, for example, I could give you free access to my apartment, while I, let's say, cook you dinner. It'd be quite a sight, Kalinda eating at a proper table."

He wanted to grin just at the picture he had created in his mind.

"You want me to believe that you can cook?"

"Only one way to find out."

"You're predictable."

"You aren't. So stun me once more, Kalinda. Say yes."

Stun him she did. She reached for him and kissed him tenderly, a suppressed smile on her face.

"Get away from my door."

He moved away but before turning and heading towards the elevator, he pushed for a verbal confirmation.

"I'll take that as a yes."

"It wasn't a go to hell."

He smiled.


End file.
